The family of a 76-year-old woman killed when a Tesla crashed into her home has filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company, as US authorities opened a second federal investigation into the wreck.
Martha Avila died after a Tesla Model 3 plowed through the front wall of her home in Katy, a suburb of Houston, on 19 June. Her daughter, Jennifer Barbour, and son-in-law, Justin Barbour, said in the lawsuit that the driver, Michael Butler, told law enforcement he had engaged autopilot before the crash. Justin Barbour was also injured.
“Driver told police he used Tesla driver-assistance before crash that killed Martha Avila, 76, in her Texas home.”
The National Transportation Safety Board said on Wednesday it was launching an investigation into the crash, two days after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced it was also investigating. The Harris County sheriff’s department confirmed the driver had described using a driver-assistance system at the time of the wreck.
Lawyers for Avila’s family filed a civil complaint on Tuesday alleging gross negligence and failure to warn that Tesla’s “autopilot” and “full self-driving” systems were defective. The lawsuit, filed in Texas state court, seeks more than $1m in damages plus punitive damages, accusing Tesla of “reckless disregard for a substantial risk of severe bodily injury”.
Tesla and Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment. But on Monday night, Musk posted on X: “FSD drives slowly through neighborhood streets and this was a high speed crash!” Tesla’s vice-president of artificial intelligence software, Ashok Elluswamy, separately posted that “the driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100% of the accel pedal in this residential area”.
The NTSB’s announcement did not elaborate on which areas the investigation would focus on.